VIRGINIA – May the fourth be with you seemed to ring true as 43,532 tickets sold in Virginia won prizes, including two tickets that each won $50,000.
But since no one in Virginia or anywhere else matched all six numbers to win the jackpot, the estimated jackpot for Saturday’s drawing grows to $415 million.
The two tickets that each won $50,000 in Wednesday night’s drawing were bought at 7-11 shops, in Virginia Beach and in Woodbridge.
Virginia Lottery officials said they expect to sell about 800,000 million Powerball tickets in the Commonwealth on Saturday alone. At peak times on Saturday, the Virginia Lottery expects to sell 1,600 Powerball tickets per minute across Virginia.
If one ticket matches all six numbers, the winner will have a choice: either take the full $415 million jackpot in 30 annual payments, or choose a one-time cash option of approximately $269.7 million before taxes.
This is the largest jackpot since the record-shattering $1.58 billion Powerball jackpot for the January 13 drawing.
Powerball drawings are held at 10:59 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays. Powerball drawings are broadcast on TV stations across Virginia and replayed on http://www.valottery.com. The cut-off time to buy a ticket is 10:00 p.m. on the night of the drawing.
Lottery officials said in the press release that lottery sales generate more than $1.4 million per day for Virginia’s K-12 public schools. However, ultimately the lottery has no control over how the General Assembly spends lottery proceeds on educational programs.
Some educators are angry because they believe not enough state lottery money ends up in local coffers but is instead diverted to help pay for state programs.
They argue it is being used as tax dollars, and instead of supplementing funding, the General Assembly is supplanting education. Educators said that the money is dropped into a general fund which allows lawmakers to use the money for a subset of educational programs like the foster care and the school breakfast programs.
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